


Stay With Me, Go Places

by bigmoneygator



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-23
Updated: 2013-08-01
Packaged: 2017-12-21 04:12:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/895662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigmoneygator/pseuds/bigmoneygator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Pacific Rim ‘verse tale about the first female-only duo of Jaeger pilots.</p><p>Claire Porter is an ex Navy pilot who abandoned Annapolis for the Jaeger program after K Day, trying to outrun the ghosts of her past. Harper Crawford is a former drifter pulled off the welding line during the construction of the Mammoth Apostle after a throwdown with a fellow welder catches the eye of the Marshal of the LA Shatterdome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Home Is Wherever I'm With You

**Author's Note:**

> I love the Jaeger pilot dynamic so I wanted to gush all over the place about a female-only duo working in a Shatterdome with a female Marshal and all sorts of cool stuff. Maybe one day I'll write a Becket/Mori friendship fluff thing but for now, this is all I got. 
> 
> The title of this series comes from "Go Places" by The New Pornographers and the chapter title is from "Home" by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes.

Claire couldn’t sleep. She got antsy in between drops. The only time she ever slept well was after a kill. For two or three nights after a drop, she curled up on the bottom bunk with her blanket pulled over her head, and fell into the kind of sleep that would make a baby jealous. She tried everything to relax enough to knock out: melatonin strips, benadryl, tracks of whale noises playing softly from the speakers she rigged onto the beams of the bunk. Sleep never came easy to her; when she was a cadet at the Naval Academy, she would lie awake all night, staring at the ceiling, wondering what fresh hell tomorrow would bring.

Harper snorted in her sleep, murmuring to herself from the top bunk. Claire sighed and put her feet on the rungs above her. Harp was her copilot. They were sharp contrasts to one another. Claire was precise efficiency, the product of a family that had served in every branch of the US military since the Civil War. Harper was the product of a listless, drifter’s life. She often commented that the Shatterdome was her longest lasting address.

Harp could sleep through anything. She slept through drills, through training time and mess breaks. When LOCCENT deployed Matador instead of their Jaeger, Mammoth, she slept right through entire Kaiju attacks. She would blearily show up on the deck mid-afternoon, when everyone was high fiving the Vasquez brothers for their excellent takedown, hair sticking up at odd angles and sleep still in her eyes, nudging Claire in the ribs and asking, “What happened?” in her soft Southern drawl.

Claire lowered the volume of the whale songs and poked her toes up into Harper’s mattress. “Harper?” she whispered. She pushed the mattress up and let it flop back down. “Harp?”

Harper made a tiny noise, like a mouse squeaking. Her hand fell down, fingers dangling right in Claire’s line of vision. Claire reached out and grabbed two of her fingers, squeezing hard. “Harper Joan.”

“Hmm,” Harper sighed. “What’s up?”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Oh.” Claire heard her yawn, jaw clicking. Harp’s jaw was wrecked from all the fights she’d been in over the years. She poked her head out, peering at Claire through squinting eyes. “Why can’t you sleep?”

“I don’t know,” Claire lied. 

Harper pulled her head back. Her feet appeared, toenails painted a horrendous shade of electric green. She swung her legs onto Claire’s mattress, careful to avoid smashing into her knees, and shimmied down until she was sitting squarely between Claire’s legs. “I was having a weird dream,” she said. She stretched out, laying her head on Claire’s stomach. “Bob Dylan was piloting Mammoth by himself.”

“You need to stop reading his biography before you go to sleep,” Claire laughed, burying her fingers into Harper’s thick hair. Claire was unendingly jealous of Harper’s hair. Harp smiled, rubbing her nose down the line of buttons on Claire’s flannel. “I keep thinking about Brooks.”

“Don’t think about Brooks,” Harper said, wrinkling her nose. Harp knew that when Claire said ‘thinking’, she meant ‘worrying’. Claire latched onto tiny things, insignificant issues, and let them eat at her thoughts. When they Drifted, all of her anxieties were like open wounds, making Harp want to peel off her skin to scratch at itches that didn’t exist. “Didn’t you just talk to him before we went to bed?”

“Yes,” Claire said.

“Was he okay?”

“He was fine.”

Harper wrapped her arms around Claire’s middle, squeezing her tight. Harp knew that sometimes it was best to be silent, a rare talent for a person so extroverted. Claire and Harper were the type of people who didn’t trust words. Language was untrustworthy. Touching another person, holding them, being next to them; that was real. That was true. 

Claire traced her finger down the outline of the tattoos on Harper’s right arm. She called it her “yearbook arm”. One tattoo for every place she went. A lobster for Maine, a maple leaf for Toronto, a grizzly bear for California. After their first kill, she had Mammoth tattooed in the last open spot on the inside of her bicep. Claire felt the burn of the tattoo needle almost every time they Drifted, the tug of the clamp and the pinch of a piercing needle in her septum, the aching sting of a broken jaw. Pain comes in strong through the Drift, especially at first.

Harper was asleep again, hot breath making a warm damp spot on Claire’s stomach. She combed her fingers through Harp’s hair, working at the tangles. She split the hair at the crown of Harp’s head into three parts, starting a French braid. It ended up crooked from the angle she was laying at, but by the time Claire tied off the end with the hair band she kept on her wrist, she was tired enough to try to sleep.

She shimmied down and pulled Harper’s head under her chin. This was where Claire was most comfortable. This was where she was at home. Wherever Harp was, Claire belonged. Whatever havoc Kaiju wreaked on humanity, Claire was unendingly grateful that it had led her to finding Harper.


	2. Ain't No Southern Belle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harp didn’t make friends easy. She was friendly enough, bumping fists with the other guys and gals on the lines, playing poker with some of them on their off time. Before the ‘Dome, she hadn’t been in one place long enough to really make friends. She didn’t hold any delusions about calling the Shatterdome ‘home’.

_November 2017, Los Angeles Shatterdome_

Harper dreamed of swirling voids, blue Kaiju blood, pain and death.

Sometimes she woke up frantic, crying so hard she hiccuped feebly, wiping at her nose and checking for blood, trying to control her panic before her sobs woke up the other laborers in their bunks. Sometimes she couldn’t wake up, trapped in her nightmares, pinned to the mats in a fight she couldn’t get out of, stuck in a coffin with her father’s corpse. Hers was not a life that showed kindness in the face of weakness. In the mornings when she awoke, she pounded energy shots and carried a thermos of coffee to the welding line to mask her exhaustion. 

No one was going to know that she was scared of the things that went on in her own head.

Harp didn’t make friends easy. She was friendly enough, bumping fists with the other guys and gals on the lines, playing poker with some of them on their off time. Before the ‘Dome, she hadn’t been in one place long enough to really make friends. She didn’t hold any delusions about calling the Shatterdome ‘home’. She knew she was only there until her usefulness ran out. Constructing Jaegers took time, and she figured she was lucky enough to get a place to stay while Mammoth Apostle was being built. If her luck held, maybe she’d work on the next one too. 

No job had ever been too menial for Harper. In Kentucky, she mucked stalls and exercised horses at the racetrack. In New York, she stole copper pipes from aging brownstones. Up in Maine, she worked on a lobster boat, hauling in traps and tossing the creatures too small to keep back into the sea. In Alabama, she broke down old cars for scrap at a junkyard. Nothing was beneath her.

When her daddy was alive, he made his living the same way, wandering the country with a few marketable skills and sending money back to take care of his family. He passed on to Harper the kind of knowledge that lets a person stay alive wherever they go: fixing cars, arc welding, and fighting. Work was scarce sometimes, and living arrangements got dicey in the winter up north. 

Around Thanksgiving every year, Harp would pack up and head back to Louisiana where she could stay with her nana for free for a bit. She would tie her hair back and kiss her daddy’s picture for luck, then go prowling in the bars she knew had rings set up in the basement. The guys who ran fights like that touted them as MMA, but Harp likened them more to the Thunderdome. You fought anyone they put you up against, and you better hope that you were stronger than the other guy.  
Nana always had something to say when Harp came home with black eyes and broken bones, spitting out blood and grinning from ear to ear. 

“You’re gonna end up just like your daddy,” Nana howled. “Lord knows I didn’t raise you to be a raggamuffin! Act like a lady for once!”

Nana was the kind of woman who had an opinion on everything. When she was younger, she was a maid in a rich white man’s house. She nearly had a heart attack when her youngest son came home with a white girlfriend, never mind the near aneurysm when Harp’s mom turned up pregnant. Aside from Harp’s untameable curly black hair and propensity for a tan, she looked like her mother. Nana used to get uncomfortable taking her to the supermarket. She had to get over that quick when Harp’s mother died in a car crash when she was five and her father was off somewhere, picking up work.

But even Nana couldn’t complain when Harp had enough cash to keep the heat on during Christmas. When Harp had enough money to take care of her when she had a heart attack. None of her other kids or grandkids had that kind of scratch just laying around. So what if Harp had to get her brain rattled around, took so many hits to the jaw that it stopped closing right? So what if there were days she couldn’t see through black eyes, if she lost almost all of her ability to taste from getting her nose smashed in too many times? It was worth it to be able to take care of Nana.

In true Harper fashion, she was sleeping when the first Kaiju made landfall. August was her month in Maine. The same lobster fisherman took her back every year, let her stay in his attic for a small cut of her pay. They went out so early that she slept most of the afternoon. When she woke up for dinner, instead of the usual spread Captain Avery’s wife normally had on the table, everyone was glued to the television set. 

With the economy crashing worse than it ever had before in the wake of the Kaiju attacks, Harp was never more grateful for the skills she had. She could survive anywhere if she had to. But with people, refugees and panicked civilians, flooding the east, all the work was out west. After Christmas of 2014, Harp kissed her nana goodbye and headed to New Mexico for the rest of the winter.

During the day, she fixed cars and campers. At night, she fought. The guys who organized the fights out there liked her because she would fight anyone, and the crowds liked her because she could win. She sent some money back to nana and tried to save the rest. It got her out of New Mexico and landed her in California.

Everyone was buzzing about the Jaeger Program. Everyone wanted to train to be a Ranger. When one of the other mechanics at the shop Harp was working at mentioned that building the Jaegers out on the Shatterdome got you a meal ticket and a place to stay, she started scheming about how to get in on that gravy train.

It wasn’t as hard as she thought it would be. Show up at PPDC headquarters and explain your pertinent skills to a recruiter and they shipped you out in a helicopter the very next day. Matador needed maintenance, and there were two more Jaegers planned to be built at the LA Shatterdome. Mammoth was being built first while the Marshals tried to find more pilots. Rangers weren’t hard to come by, but good workers were a little trickier.

Harper didn’t concern herself too much with the Rangers, cocky showoff types who disappeared for days on end into the training units. Some of them were nice. A few swung by poker nights, and one or two of the guys were handsome enough to make Harp swoon a little. She was too busy for romance. Forget just the welding job. There were a thousand little things that needed taking care of on the ‘Dome, and Harp volunteered for even the worst of the tasks.

Fixing a desalinator in knee-deep icy water wasn’t nearly as bad as lobstering. Slogging through backed up toilet water in the head wasn’t nearly as bad as replacing septic tanks in RVs. Slopping out food in the mess hall was downright pleasant compared to most of the things Harper had done for money across the country. She was trying to extend her usefulness, desperate to show that even if they didn’t need her to weld on the next project, she was good for any other job on the ‘Dome, save installing nuclear reactors.

Harp’s closest thing to a friend on the ‘Dome was Adam, a smart-mouth who shipped in from Sydney. He fabricated the flight suits for the Jaeger pilots, as well as getting the Rangers in and out of them. Adam joked that he was like the guy who gassed up fighter jets before they left the tarmac. Crucial, but totally unappreciated. Harp didn’t know quite how to tell him that she thought he was invaluable. She didn’t need him to, but he watched out for her.

There weren’t a lot of women on the crew, and even less in the labor division. Certainly there were more in the Rangers and in research, but Harp was an outlier on the welding line. Most of the guys accepted her, or at least kept their mouths shut, even if she wasn’t a union worker. Some of the guys called her “Wilda the Welder” and made jokes about how they had to step up their game. Only one or two of the guys openly loathed her.

Harper didn’t give a shit what people thought of her. Not everyone was going to love you or even like you, not everything was sunshine and butterflies and cakes made out of friendship. She knew that since she first time she stepped out her door to roam on her own, since the first night she had spent alone ended in a bar fight in Houston. The welders who didn’t like her was nothing a good ass kicking wouldn’t cure, and when Adam tried to warn her about pissing off the wrong people, that’s what she told him.

“You can’t just kick someone’s ass on the Shatterdome,” Adam snorted. “This isn’t the wild west or something. You get into a fight, you think the Marshal won’t eighty-six your cute little butt? No way. This isn’t a circus. It’s the PPDC.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Harper sighed. “Don’t lecture me. You sound like my grandmother.”

“I’m just sayin’!” Adam said, throwing his hands up. “You’re the one who’s so concerned about staying on for the next Jaeger project. Marshal’s always going on about unity and togetherness and cooperation. Don’t think a fight wouldn’t automatically DQ you from working on another Jaeger.”

“Sure, sure.” Harp shrugged it off. Adam gave her the kind of look that suggested he’d be watching her. She didn’t say anything about kicking anyone’s ass again, and she tried to watch her step after that.

The welder who didn’t like her was named Mark. Whatever his problem with Harp was, exactly, she couldn’t pinpoint. He made Kaiju noises at her when she passed, telling his buddies, “Watch out, Category Four incoming!” Harp didn’t understand the insult until Adam explained that he was trying to call her fat.

“That’s ridiculous,” Harp snorted. She used the gym when the Rangers weren’t occupying it for training. Maybe she could have been a little more careful with the cookies, but who honestly gave a damn? “Who cares if I’m fat as long as I’m doing good work?”

Adam sighed. “Harper, for a street smart little punk, you sure are dense sometimes.”

Harper would have let the name calling and the Kaiju screeches go. Despite making most of her money on winning prize fights, she was an exceptionally peaceful person. She was only aggressive on the mats. She didn’t even have a temper; not really, anyway. She supposed that everyone had a limit, herself included, even if it had never really been tested before.

And Mark _did_ test her. You couldn’t give in to bullies if you wanted them to leave you alone. The minute you gave in, they’d never let up. He tried to trip her in the mess hall. He changed the combination on her foot locker. He took her paperbacks and hid them around the ‘Dome, in Adam’s sheets, in the workshop, even stuck one in Mammoth’s hydraulic cables. She wanted to strangle him. 

“Just report him to the foreman!” Adam insisted as he spotted for her while she lifted. “Report him to the damn Marshal if you have to.”

“Fuck that,” Harper huffed. “He’ll just think I’m weak and start up worse.”

“Or the Marshal will kick him off the ‘Dome.”

“He’s union, man,” Harper said. “He’ll never get cut.”

Adam didn’t have anything constructive to say to that. Harper just kept marching through the mess, kicking Mark in the shins a little when he stuck his legs out to trip her. She just got a new toothbrush from the commissary when she found hers floating in the piss trough in the bathroom. She started making Kaiju screeches back at him when he taunted her.

For a while, Mark left her alone. Harp’s life was finally quiet. She hung out with Adam and woke up early to get her work for the day done and over with. Poker night moved from Friday to Wednesday and everyone was getting along. Then Harp’s torch started malfunctioning. She shrugged about it, grabbed a new one, and called it a day.

The next day, all of the electrodes in her torch, brand new the day before, were burnt out. Harp replaced them, worked until quitting time, and made sure she put everything away very carefully. Her workstation was a mess the day after. Someone had tampered with her power supply. Her mask was missing. She sucked on her teeth. 

Harper had finally hit her limit.

She stormed out of her workstation and asked the foreman where Mark was.

“Mess break,” he said. “Why you looking for him?”

“Got a quick question. Let him borrow something, need it back,” Harp lied through gritted teeth. The foreman nodded and she left. People passing her didn’t say hello. They just got out of their way. Adam caught sight of her as she was about to go into the mess.

“Woah, woah,” he said, grabbing her arm. “What’s wrong?”

“That fucker stole my mask. He messed with my power supply and my torch. I don’t give a shit, Adam. He’s fucking with my safety,” Harper snarled.

“Nope, no, don’t go in there,” Adam said, trying to pull her away. “You’re going to get yourself in trouble.”

“I don’t care. It’s one thing to throw my toothbrush in a toilet and completely another to try and give me arc eye.”

“Harp, don’t do anything stupid,” Adam said, shaking her a little. “You want this job, don’t you?”

“Fuck the job,” Harp said, pushing Adam off with a little too much force. He stumbled. “No one’s fucking with my health.” She went into the mess hall, Adam staring after her. The mess was loud and packed, nearly everyone sitting down for lunch or shooting the shit. Harp scanned the benches, ignoring the few people who tried to wave or say hello.

When she spotted Mark, she marched right up to him and threw her gloves in his face.

“I don’t know what your god damn _problem_ with me is,” she snapped, “but if you fuck with my torch again, I’m reporting your ass to OSHA, your union, the foreman, and everyone in the PPDC brass who’ll listen to me.”

“What’s with the hostility?” Mark said. “I was just playing a couple of pranks.”

“Putting my books in Mammoth’s cables? _That’s_ a prank. Throwing my toothbrush in the trough? _That’s_ a prank, even if it is kind of a mean one. You start messing with my power source and fucking with my torch? You’re slowing down the build time, and I could actually get hurt.” She squared her feet and planted her hands on her hips. “Quit fucking with me, man. Go ahead and call me fat and make fun of me. But don’t you dare try to get me hurt.”

“Listen here, _missy_ ,” Mark sneered, “I don’t know who’s been touching your stuff but it sure as hell ain’t me.”

“Like hell!” she snarled. “You’ve been a thorn in my side since the day I came to the ‘Dome!”

Mark made a clucking noise with his tongue against his teeth and stood up. He stood head and shoulders taller than Harper, all muscle in his shoulders and arms. Harper figured his legs wouldn’t be his strong point. If she was going to fight him, she wasn’t going to lose.

“I’m not touching your shit,” he hissed, hot breath stinking of cigarettes as it broke on Harp’s face. “I think you need to learn some respect.”

“ _I_ need to learn some respect?” Harper laughed. “You’re on the same shitty welding line as me! Don’t act like you’re out here curing cancer or something!”

“You really need to reconsider who you’re messing with, bitch.” Mark punctuated his last word by jabbing Harper in the shoulder, right in the hollow of the joint. She let him gloat down at her for a minute, thinking he might have won this round.

She swung up for the satisfying click of Mark’s teeth when his jaw connected with his skull. The mess became dead silent, every Ranger, worker and researcher in the place turned to stare at Mark and Harper. She had caught him off guard, but she didn’t think he’d be so quick to recover. He landed one fist in her gut and the other on her left eye, smashing her nose. She stumbled, but managed to duck before he could get another hit in.

Harp jabbed him quick in the ribs, and when he went to grab her hair, she caught him by the pressure point between his thumb and forefinger. While he was writhing, she kicked him in the back of his knees, swinging around to pin his arm to his back. She grabbed him by his hair and slammed his face into the concrete once.

“You remember who _you’re_ messing with,” she hissed in his ear, “ _bitch_.”

She tossed him down and stood up, wiping at the blood trickling out of her nose. Everyone in the mess was frozen. Several of the Rangers had gotten up, looking like they were trying to decide whether or not they should help her or pull her off. Mark groaned from the floor, flipping himself on his side so he could spit out blood. 

“Don’t move,” someone shouted. 

Harper froze, shoulders hunched around her ears. She knew that voice. _Everyone_ at the ‘Dome knew that voice. Marshal Amelia Stanger had the kind of voice that would make the Devil piss his pants. When she barked orders from the top deck, people in the work stations could hear her over their power tools. Stanger ran the ‘Dome from the top down, and God help you if you crossed her. Slowly, Harper turned towards the voice, bracing herself for a reprimand that would make her ears bleed.  
Stanger was marching down the gap in the tables towards Harp, eyebrows knitted, lips pinched into a frown. Her shoes made muffled clacks on the floor. “What the hell is this?” Stanger growled, pointing at Mark. His head was lolling around. None of his friends had gotten up to help him.

“Um,” Harper squeaked. “Uh. I.”

“Hey, woah,” one of Mark’s friends said, finally leaping up. He went around the table and helped Mark up. “I saw the whole thing. She came up here and started throwing things and yelling. She started it.”

“Is this true?” Stanger asked, crossing her arms.

“Yes, ma’am,” Harper admitted miserably.

“Why in the name of all things sacred would you come over here and start throwing things at a man at least twice your size?” Stanger’s eyes got even narrower, glittering wickedly. 

“Well, uh.” Harper rubbed her neck guiltily. She coughed. “Well, ma’am, he’d been giving me a bit of a tough time lately.”

“Explain yourself a little more fully,” Stanger said.

“Just teasing me. Calling me fat and messing with the stuff in my footlocker. But. Well. Ma’am, he messed with my welding equipment and stole some of my safety gear. That’s dangerous, and it slows my work down a lot.”

Stanger made a noise in the back of her throat. “I see. And you decided to handle this on your own, as opposed to going to your foreman? Or myself?”

“With all due respect, ma’am, it’s been my experience that bullies don’t take kindly to what they perceive as weakness. Maybe a Ranger might be frightened of disciplinary action, but not someone like this.” Harper’s eyes darted down to where Mark’s friend was trying to staunch the bleeding coming from his eyebrow. “I do regret making a bit of a mess.”

Stanger regarded her from head to toe. She had a powerful gaze, the kind that made a person feel like they were being x-rayed. Like Stanger could see all the wormy little lies in your head, and she was assessing all the molecules that made you up. Harper tried her best not to squirm. Stanger reached into her pocket and handed Harp a handkerchief.

“You’ve got a bit of blood coming out of your nose,” Stanger said, mouth twitching. 

Harp took the handkerchief and wiped at her upper lip. 

Stanger turned to the table of welders. “Listen up, _kiddos_. If I find out anyone’s spreading disrespect or messing around in other people’s kits, I will put my foot so far up your asses that you’ll be coughing up shoelaces. I won’t tolerate it. I’ll send your sorry ass to Vladivostok and see how great you get along with the Russians. Understood?” There was a murmur of assent. Mike nodded mutely. “Take him to the med bay. I don’t even want to look at him.”

Mark’s friend hauled him up to his feet and helped him walk out of the mess. Harper was glad the handkerchief was covering her mouth so no one could see the smirk on her face. 

“And you,” Stanger said, wheeling on Harper. “What’s your name?”

“Crawford, Harper Joan,” Harp said, her voice a little muffled.

“Crawford? Aren’t you the gal that fixes the latrines?”

“I take whatever work ya’ll have for me.”

“Come with me,” Stanger said, turning on her heel.

“Ma’am?” Harp asked.

“That was an order, Crawford.”

Harper tried to keep her head held high as she followed Stanger out of the mess. Adam stared after her, but she didn’t want to return his gaze and risk crying. Harper didn’t cry. Not in public, anyway. She didn’t want anyone to know how bitterly disappointed she was in herself. Adam was right. She shouldn’t have let Mark get to her. Now she’d be back on dry land, fighting in basements and working on cars. She was already saying goodbye to the Shatterdome, saying goodbye to her hot shower and Mammoth and Adam, when Stanger pulled her into the currently empty combat room.

“Listen to me, Crawford,” Stanger said. “It took a lot of guts to smack that guy around. I would say it took more guts to wait so long to smack him around.”

“Ma’am?” Harp asked, raising one eyebrow. “What are you trying to say?”

“Have you ever thought about becoming a Ranger?”

Harper snorted. “No way.”

“Why not?” Stanger’s voice had softened somewhat, quite a feat for her. 

“I’m just . . .” Harper gestured with her hands. “I’m just not Ranger material, I guess. I’m not disciplined. I don’t like taking orders. I really like sleeping.”

“You’re not a bad fighter,” Stanger said. “I would go so far as to say you’re actually a pretty good fighter. If you have what it takes mentally, you might make a halfway decent Ranger someday.”

“Are you serious?” Harp asked, incredulous. “You’re not going to throw me off the ‘Dome?”

Stanger barked out a laugh. “Not today, Crawford. Where did you learn to fight like that?”

“My father taught me. I made most of my money in . . . questionable streetfights.”

Stanger smiled. It was an occurrence so rare that instead of softening her face, it only terrified Harper more. Before either of them could say anything else, Adam burst into the room, out of breath with his jumpsuit tied around his waist.

“Marshal, it wasn’t her fault,” Adam panted. “She really was just defending herself, I’m sorry I never made a report-”

“At ease there, Walker. I’m not dismissing Miss Crawford,” Stanger said.

“You’re . . . You’re not?” Adam asked.

“No. I’m asking her to join Ranger training.”

“You . . . are?” Adam looked utterly confused.

“Yes. If she accepts, maybe she can start tomorrow.” Stanger looked at Harper. “We have a training session tomorrow at oh-six-hundred, right here.”

“Isn’t that in the morning?” Harper asked, frowning.

“If you have a problem with the training schedule, I can always change my mind,” Stanger snapped.

“No, ma’am,” Harper said, standing up a little straighter.

“Work hard, Crawford, and maybe one day you’ll pilot Mammoth,” Stanger said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Harper said.

“You’re dismissed. You too, Walker.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Adam said. 

Harper hurried over to Adam and they left the training room.

“You are the luckiest son of a bitch I’ve ever met,” Adam hissed, squeezing her arm.

“I know,” Harper laughed. “Isn’t it great?”

Adam sighed. “Don’t fuck this up. There’s only four spots open for pilots here.”

“I don’t think I will. Hey, you wanna spar with me now?” she asked excitedly. 

“After seeing what you did to Mark, I’ll pass,” he said. “I’m kind of proud of you.”

Harp smiled over at Adam and he socked her on the shoulder. Not bad for the daughter of a man who died in a back alley wrestling match. Not bad at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thus ends most of Harper's backstory. In case you were wondering: yes, she's partly named after Joan Crawford. In my head, her mom was a big fan. Draw your own conclusions about the Harper/Adam relationship.
> 
> I PROMISE THERE WILL BE AN ACTUAL KAIJU FIGHT OKAY. Just not for another chapter or two. Okay thanks.
> 
> Name for the chapter comes from "Thin Line" by honeyhoney.


	3. Better Men Have Hit Their Knees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Training to be a Ranger was the most physically exhausting thing Claire had ever done. She could run a mile in just under four and a half minutes, tackle an obstacle course in seven. She could survive basic for the Navy. She almost couldn’t survive the Jaeger training.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Raise Hell" by Brandi Carlisle. One more chapter until a real Kaiju fight. I promise.

Claire’s earliest memory is of the sky. Bright blue, puffy marshmallow clouds. In her memory, she reaches out to grab the clouds. She remembers wanting very badly to eat them, to take them in her chubby toddler hands and stuff them greedily into her mouth. She imagined they would taste like the vanilla taffy, soft and sweet and melting into the crevices of her teeth. Her father told her not to think nonsense like that. You can’t eat clouds. The tiny little memory, hidden away in the corner of her brain only ever to be brought up when Claire was feeling nostalgic, explained two very basic things about her: Claire wanted nothing more than to disappear into the sky, and her father was the smasher of all hopes and dreams.

The Major served his entire adult life in the Marine Corps. His father had served before him, and his before him, all the way back to the first McAdow officer, captured in his sharp Union blues in a faded tintype that they kept on their mantle. Everything about the McAdow-Porter home screamed duty and honor.

Mom was the first that cracked under dad’s tight-fisted rule of the house. It seemed to Claire, even at the age of ten, that mom had been straining under the weight of dad’s barked orders, red-faced screaming and hawkeyed scrutiny for years. Mom lost her mind entirely when she left dad. She cackled as she pitched their entire wedding album into the fireplace and cut her hair with a pair of kitchen shears. She took Sylvia and Owen, the two oldest kids, packed the station wagon, and drove off in the middle of the night.

Claire spent a lot of nights wondering why her mother didn’t take her too. Why wasn’t she as good as Sylvia and Owen? What made mom want to keep some of her children but not all of them? Mom sent her postcards from California, pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge. She sent cheap little trinkets from China Town. She never sent an invitation to visit.

The hopes, however farflung, that dad used to harbor for his eldest children fell heavily onto the heads of the remaining three. Claire had decided that if she wasn’t good enough for her mother, she was going to do her damndest to be good enough for her father. Let Ethan and Tim grouse and bitch about going into the military. Let the boys chafe against dad. Claire was going to fly jets. She hadn’t ever wanted anything less. 

Ethan was tucked away at West Point, and Tim was getting ready to leave for the Air Force Academy when the first Kaiju made landfall. Claire had dreamed all night about mom and her siblings. In her dream, they looked just like they did in the last picture Sylvia had sent her. Mom and her chopped off hair and bright orange dress. Sylvia and her long, long hair, pin-straight to the tops of her thighs, dyed the color of a bright, new penny. Owen with his ponytail and pierced ear. The strange hippy family that Claire wished in equal parts to desperately be a part of and to be as far away as possible at the same time.

There was no way to find most of the bodies of the people who died on K Day, at least the bodies of those who were crushed in the rubble under Trespasser’s feet. After the place was completely irradiated, there was no going back to look. Mom and Sylvia and Owen were on the list of the missing, presumed dead. Even dad shed a tear. He didn’t say anything to Claire when she howled for hours in her room.

If she had ever had any doubts about being in the Navy, if there was any last shred of unease regarding going to the Naval Academy, those anxieties died with her mother. There was nothing else to fight Kaiju with. Claire steeled herself, and went to Annapolis.

Had mom still been alive, she probably would have told Claire to always be careful what you wish for, because sometimes you get it. You never know what to do with your heart’s desire, and wanting something that could turn out to be so bad for you was worse than never getting it in the first place.

Claire hated Annapolis. She hated it so much that she began to question her own sanity at having once wanted it so badly. She should have just gone to school to be a commercial airline pilot. She should have just done anything but this.

For one long year, Claire put up with the kind of shit that she thought only happened in nineties movies about high school or overly precautious young adult novels from the early 2000’s. The male cadets were the worst kind of grime; the kind that seemed to settle in the base of Claire’s mind, got under her fingernails, under her skin. She wiggled out of tight spots more times than she could count. She was lucky. There was no camaraderie with the other female cadets. They were catty, prone to spreading rumors. Let them catch you in one compromising situation, and the entire Academy knew about it in the hour.

After the Jaeger Program went public, all branches of the military offered honorable discharges to anyone willing to join up. Claire did not make decisions lightly. All her life, she had sat and weighed the pros and cons of each path a choice might take her. For the first time, she didn’t think twice. She was the first one in her superior’s office with her discharge papers, waiting to be signed. Here was her reprieve from a bad choice. Here was her chance to take charge of her own revenge, to fight against what had taken her mother from her the second time.

Training to be a Ranger was the most physically exhausting thing Claire had ever done. She could run a mile in just under four and a half minutes, tackle an obstacle course in seven. She could survive basic for the Navy. She almost couldn’t survive the Jaeger training.

It was a head game. Claire figured that out before she even got into the Combat Room. Marshal Pentecost had said as much. They were trying to break you. The Marshals would pair them up and then lock the door on the combat room. Every twenty minutes, they would switch sparring partners and fighting types. Claire could be boxing a hundred pound girl for a session, and then a two-hundred and fifty pound guy could be trying to take out her jugular with krav maga the next. Rookies fought for two hours at a stretch. They worked the trainees up to fourteen hours four times a week.

A lot of people dropped the program after they made the jump from four to six hour sparring sessions. Claire almost didn’t make it. She would drag herself into her bunk after training, knockout for ten hours, and wake up debating with herself about whether or not she even wanted to go to the gym for mandatory work out time. 

Classroom training had always been Claire’s favorite part of Annapolis, and it held true for the Jaeger Academy too. If training made the recruits drop like flies, the classes they had to take were lethal. There were courses on basic Kaiju anatomy, tactics and strategy, Jaeger build and operation, and, of course, the Drift. 

Claire had made it a point to be sufficient unto herself for most of her life. It was different on Kodiak Island. Even the best Ranger was only as good as their copilot. If you couldn’t find anyone Drift compatible, you were essentially useless. Sometimes you could look at people and just tell they were compatible. The Becket brothers fell into step with each other before they ever set foot in the Conn Pod sim. Claire had to go into the sim alone, a mind generated by the computer to be perfectly compatible with hers standing in as her copilot. 

Being alone was not an asset here.

Claire finished her training and lamented her lack of a copilot. She was one of the top Rangers; an average score of 97% with a perfect drop-to-kill ratio in the sim, perfect GPA in the classroom hours, and well-respected and liked among the Marshals. There was just no one to pilot a Jaeger with. 

Since training had started being conducted at the individual Shatterdomes, unpaired Rangers were itching to get out of the Academy and see if there was anyone somewhere else for them. You could smell desperation oozing from some of the mediocre pilots who were still solo. It was worse than an over fifty singles meetup; everyone trampling over each other to find their soulmate. Marshal Tamaya offered teaching positions to the better ones, Claire included.

Claire didn’t want to teach. She thrust the print out of the perfectly compatible brain the computer had made for her at Tamaya and said, “Find me this person. Find them and I’ll never let you down.”

Tamaya took Claire with him when he was reassigned to the Sydney ‘Dome. He told her not to get her hopes up. He told her that she could still be useful even if they couldn’t find her a drift compatible copilot. She knew how to fly a helicopter. She knew how to work most of the com relays. It was probably the only time that Claire didn’t listen to someone who was trying to give her sound advice.

In Sydney, Claire met Banner Blake. Banner was a soft spoken young woman with flaming red hair and a mouthful of crooked teeth. Her hair reminded Claire of Sylvia’s. Banner wasn’t a perfect match, neurologically speaking. The LOCCENT Ops guys worried about the high levels of cortisone in both of their brains. Claire had a low level of dynorphine; pretty common in people with anxiety. The psychiatrists put them through relaxation training. Psychotropics were frowned upon; taking the effects of anxiety meds into the Drift could cause disastrous consequences for the pilot not suffering from it.

Banner and Claire caused quite a stir in the meantime. There were plenty of female Jaeger pilots, but all of them were in male-female teams. If Banner and Claire drifted successfully, they would be the first female only duo of Jaeger pilots. Everyone had such high hopes for them that news outlets were hounding them for interviews, and a cursory internet search turned up constant mentions of their names. They were the number one trending topic on Twitter for two weeks in a row. 

It made the inevitable letdown that much more painful.

The Marshals had successfully scared off the reporters for their first handshake in the simulator. Claire couldn’t speak for Banner, but as for herself, she was a wreck. She tried the breathing exercises the psychiatrists had taught her, all the relaxation techniques, but her anxiety was getting the better of her. She was completely petrified at the prospect of all of her shortcomings being laid out for someone else to see; her mother’s departure, the sting of feeling like she wasn’t good enough for most of her life, getting smacked with her father’s belt, the death of her mother and Sylvia and Owen. Banner was going to see all of that. It was embarrassing.

She should have said something before they even strapped her and Banner into the suits. She could have said something and avoided the disaster. It might have been a disappointment, but it wouldn’t have been the fiasco it turned into.

Banner and Claire held hands when Officer Lee initiated the handshake. The connection was terrible. Instead of the smooth rush of thoughts they had been trained for, there were flashes. The memories flickered in and out, peppered with confusion and pain. It was like waves rolling in and out. Claire twitched and writhed. The bits of Banner’s thoughts that she felt were panicked. Seizures in Jaeger pilots were dangerous; the electrical impulses in seizures sometimes act by bouncing off the brain and creating a worse seizure through the ripple effect. In Jaeger pilots, they bounced off the bridge, through both brains, and back into the first brain twice as strong.

Claire seized first. Officer Lee terminated the handshake before the impulses ricocheted, but not before Banner seized as well. 

They both got sidelined. Claire was so disappointed in herself that she didn’t even come out of her room for a week except to go get the scans taken to make sure her brain hadn’t been too badly damaged when she seized. Banner came in to see her, to hold her hand and tell her that it wasn’t her fault. Herc Hansen, one of the best pilots in the world, came in to tell her to buck up. Claire just faced the wall and burned. She crumpled up the scan of her perfect partner and threw it off the deck into the sea. 

Tamaya finally dragged her out. 

“Training time, Porter,” Tamaya barked. “Up and at em.”

“Why?” Claire asked, rubbing her eyes.

“We have to keep you in top condition if we’re going to find you a copilot, don’t we?”

Claire sat up. “You’re still going to try?”

“The LA ‘Dome is up and running. Plenty of new recruits there, eh?”

“What about Banner?” Claire asked.

“It turns out she’s Drift compatible with her younger brother. They’re teaming up now.”

Claire groaned. Of course she was. Siblings were almost always compatible. Claire didn’t even know that Banner had a brother, let alone one that was in Ranger training. She couldn’t help but feel miserable and cheated when she finally met the younger Blake sibling. Brooklyn was taller than his sister by a whole head and didn’t have her crooked teeth, but shared her bright red hair and quiet demeanor.

When Banner and Brooklyn finally got into their Jaeger, Vulcan Specter, everyone cheered. Claire burned with jealousy.

Brooklyn had taken to inviting Claire to sit with Vulcan’s team at mealtimes, but she always went and ate with the drive suit crew. Those guys were funny. It was a shame that they were always switching ‘Domes. Claire actually got along with them. Brooklyn always looked a little hurt when she ignored him. She didn’t care. It wasn’t his fault that she wasn’t compatible with Banner, but she was still bitter over it.

Tamaya kept Claire in fighting condition, and then informed her that she would be summarily sent to Los Angeles to continue trying to find a copilot. 

“Third time’s the charm, right?” Claire grinned.

“Go pack,” Tamaya said, waving his hand. “I can’t stand it when you get smug.”

Claire was rolling her socks into little balls when Brooklyn knocked on her open doorway.

“Come in,” she said, not looking up.

“Hi,” he said shyly. 

“Hello,” she said. She tossed her balled up socks into the open duffel at the foot of her bed. “Did Tamaya have anything else to say to me?”

“No,” he coughed. “I just heard you were leaving. So I wanted to . . . Well. I wanted to say hello. And goodbye.”

“Oh.” Claire straightened and pushed her blonde hair away from her eyes.

“Look, I . . . I know you have some hard feelings towards me.” Brooklyn blew out a long breath. “I wanted to say sorry. I know that being a pilot without actually being a pilot must suck.”

“It does.” 

“But I mean, it really doesn’t make much sense to hold a grudge when you’re leaving. You’re going to find a copilot.” He smiled and his green eyes sparkled. “I just know you will.”

Claire sighed. “Brooklyn, I’m really sorry I’ve been so messed up towards you. It’s just a really big letdown to deal with.”

“Call me Brooks, please. And I know that. I really just didn’t want you to leave and not . . . You know. Make friends.”

Claire smiled and let out a little huff through her nose. “Well, then. Are we friends now?”

“Oh yeah. Definitely friends. When are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Five hundred hours.”

He whistled. “You gonna have breakfast?”

“I’m not sure. Why?”

“So I could get a last goodbye in.”

“I can always sit with you at dinner tonight.”

“That would be nice.”

Claire looked at Brooks very carefully. He had his hands stuffed into his pockets. His face was scruffy and there were freckles on his shoulders, across his nose and cheeks. He was actually sort of cute. 

“You want some company while you pack?” he asked.

“Sure.” She shrugged. “Make yourself useful and fold some t-shirts.”

At dinner, Banner looked immensely relieved when Claire sat down next to her, across from Brooks. 

“Thank God,” Banner sighed.

“What?” Claire asked.

Banner looked over at Brooks, who was laughing and elbowing the guy next to him. “You have no idea how intolerable he’s been lately.”

“What do you mean?” Claire whispered.

“All he does is moon over you. Even in the Drift,” Banner whispered. “You should see the way he thinks about you. It’s all rosy and sweet. I get a dopamine high for days afterwards.”

“Really?” Claire hissed. “But he’s never even spoken to me.”

Banner shrugged. “He’s got a crush.”

Claire had no idea what to say to that. 

Brooks and Claire spent the entire night together. Claire felt horrible that she had put off getting to know him until the night before she left. He was funny and bright, and he liked good music. They danced and laughed and went up to the top deck to look at the stars. 

“Why did you become a Ranger?” Claire asked, hands behind her head as they stared at the sky.

“I have a hero complex,” he said. “I wanted to be Superman when I was a kid.”

Claire laughed. “I wanted to be a jet fighter.”

“This is kind of close.”

“I hated the Navy.”

“Is that why you joined up?”

“Kind of.” She shrugged. “I lost my mom and my brother and sister in K Day. They moved to San Fran when I was a kid.”

Brooks knocked his leg into hers. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right. I hadn’t seen them in years when it happened.”

“But you still missed them.”

“Yeah. I still do, even now.”

They were quiet, watching clouds drift quietly across the sky. The ocean below splashed against the hull of the ‘Dome, sounding like waves breaking on the beach. Claire put her hands up, reaching for the sky like she had when she was a child. When she pulled them back, rested them at her sides, Brooks reached over and grabbed one, lacing his fingers with hers.

“I think I’m gonna miss you when you go to LA,” he said.

“War is no place for romance,” Claire laughed. 

“Aw, be nice to me. You’ve been so rotten lately.”

“I already apologized!”

Brooks sat up and tugged her hand gently until she did too. He leaned over and kissed her. “I guess I’ll see you when you’re piloting your own Jaeger.”

“There’s always the chance we’ll be deployed to the same fight,” she said.

“Maybe you’ll be saving my ass.”

“Maybe you’ll be saving mine.”

He laughed. “You’re going to be a great Ranger.”

She kissed him again. “I know,” she said. “That, I definitely know.”

Claire left in the morning with a promise to call Brooks when she landed in LA fresh off her lips and the hope of finding a copilot burning up her thoughts.


End file.
